Mobile devices, such as laptops, etc., are increasingly equipped with both wireless local area network (WLAN) devices (e.g., Wi-Fi) and wireless wide area network (WWAN) devices (e.g., 2G/3G cellular, LTE, WiMAX) radios, enabling the user to connect to the Internet over the “best” available network. For example, when a user is at home, the mobile device may access the Internet through a home WLAN, which usually provides higher bandwidth than a WWAN. When the user is mobile, such as when in a moving vehicle, the mobile device can remain connected to the Internet through the WWAN, which generally has a much larger coverage area. (LTE is short for “long-term evolution”; 2G cellular is short for second generation cellular technology; 3G cellular is short for third generation cellular technology; WiMAX is short for “worldwide interoperability for microwave access”.)
There exists no control logic on today's mobile wireless platform, such as laptop computers, to turn on and off the second radio while there is already a first radio connected to the Internet, for providing seamless Internet connectivity. The user must manually switch the Internet connectivity to the second radio on the mobile device, such as by using the “On/Off” button of the Connection Utility/Manager.
It is, however, possible to keep both the WLAN and WWAN radios on continuously so that the operating system, such as Windows 7, will determine which radio/network to use for a particular application, based on a routing table. The drawback of this approach is that power consumption will be higher, since both radios are on all the time, even though one of them might be used at any given time. Furthermore, such an approach will not work if multiple radios are limited by radio frequency (RF) coexistence.
Thus, there is a continuing need for a solution that overcomes the shortcomings of the prior art.